


A Homecoming

by orphan_account



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Wangst, wangst as far as the eye can see
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 19:55:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2824163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account





	A Homecoming

It is not a mystery to Thorin Oakenshield how a hole can be a home.

He has had the occasion to see the many homes of man, to see the places his people are forced to make do with. There is no mystery to him that anything that can provide shelter can be a home, and though the ways of the Shire are many and strange, he recognizes the warm press of earth and stone all around him.

He doesn’t understand how a hobbit’s hole and a mountain can be so utterly different, but they are, and he’s not sure that he’s comfortable with settling into the warmth of the former. The owner doesn’t make him any more comfortable in the place, as far as far can be from a dwarf. That a wizard has chosen him doesn’t make it any better.

When the hobbit faints, Thorin feels the farthest from home he has ever been.

-

He can’t say what it is he feels when the little hobbit chases after them, running. On the one hand, he is still the frail thing that fainted only the night before, still the tiny burglar recommended by a wizard, whose intentions the dwarf lord doesn’t entirely trust. 

But there is something about the speed with which Bilbo reaches them, and the breathless way he presents his contract that makes Thorin somehow proud of him. He is not a stalwart hero, perhaps, and most definitely not a dwarf, but his enthusiasm for coming into the fold of Thorin’s company is hard to deny. Thorin would still take him above many.

He laughs with the others when the hobbit asks to turn them around for the sake of a handkerchief, wondering if how anyone can turn away from a home, secure in the feeling it will be there when they return.  
-

There is a reason that Thorin doesn’t trust the hobbit any more than he trusts the wizard, and that is because he was chosen to sneak. And sneak Thorin is afraid he might, because he’s certainly no fighter. 

Hearing him talk of home doesn’t help things much.

Their journey is a long one, filled with many nights and mornings and all the space in between. In that time, he is not deaf to the conversations of his crew, to the stories traded casually by their burglar.

They ask him of the Shire and of home, and he tells them, blissfully unaware as to why they are so breathlessly comforted by talk of home. He tells them of tall trees and lush fields, and describes the quiet golden light that always seems to shine on it. Bilbo can paint pictures with his tongue,his words blooming like the flowers he tells them about with such care.

And it’s that care that Thorin finds dangerous, each detail about the folds of petals or the curl of a vine like the brandishing of a sword to the leader of their party. Because he isn’t like them, who only yearn for something that some have never even laid eyes on, and the others only remember in the haziest of visions.

They cannot lovingly consider the details of their home, and so they hang on Bilbo’s. And therein lies the danger; Bilbo yearns, too. He yearns for his home, and everything that includes, and with each successive morning, Thorin Oakenshield grows more and more surprised that Bilbo has not turned his back on them.

-

He tells the hobbit to go home.

In not so many words, perhaps, but with enough of the intention that he can see the hurt in Bilbo’s eyes. And Thorin turns away from it, secure in the belief that he’s only doing what is best for everyone.

For reasons that he can’t quite place, he threw himself over the side of a canyon to save the hobbit. He wants to tell himself that it’s merely how he was raised, merely the dwarven capacity to see danger and ignore every natural instinct as they charge towards it. Yet, there’s a larger part of him that tells him that’s not true. The truth is that he felt panic as he saw Bilbo slip from his vision, that he’s been consumed with an ever growing guilt over the truth of the words he shared with the wizard back in Bag End.

The truth is that Thorin cannot assure Bilbo’s safety, and it’s wearing on him. It’s wearing on him that the hobbit that speaks so tenderly of turning soil with his own hands, the hobbit who tells them all the ways to prepare tea to it’s best-steeped state, might perish in pain, his soft features twisted by agony. The road is no place for him, especially a road that ends with dragonfire.

Thorin is not surprised that they enter the goblin kingdom with Bilbo nowhere to be seen, and by the time that Gandalf is asking after him, Thorin feels only pain and resignation that the hobbit was never meant to be with them at all. And though he means what he says, to quash any of the tenderness in him for the hobbit whose stories they have all come to rely on, and whose company they have all enjoyed, there is a part of him that cannot help but be enraged that he comes out of the cave behind them. He is so angry at the hobbit, who looks at him with his large, expressive eyes and tells Thorin Oakenshield that he wants the dwarves to have as many stories of home as he does.

He’s almost grateful to be over run by the orcs, to be thrust into something that requires his anger, that makes it useful. He’s almost grateful that he can center all of his frustration and rage on someone who deserves it, on someone who feeds the fire and makes his feelings validated in something other than picking up the hobbit by the scruff of his neck and dragging him back to the elven city.

He’s less grateful when he lands on his back, when all the memories of why he doesn’t like orcs in the first place come back to him in a flood of fire and searing pain. And then, in the midst of his anger and agony is shock, shock that the little hobbit who fainted in the Shire is now defending him, is trying to buy him time. When they escape by the skin of their teeth, on the back and in the claws of birds, Thorin does not have the time or the space of consciousness to consider his feelings on the matter.

When he embraces Bilbo, it is all he can do not to kiss him. It is all he can do not to look on Erebor, and welcome Bilbo home, too.

-

The sickness of the mountain creeps over him, slowly.

He doesn’t realize it at first. He doesn’t realize that the gold he has used to run off a dragon is the thing now being used to waste him, too. 

In part, he doesn’t realize it, because he thinks that he can still feel everything as normal. He still feels warmth spread through him like light through a jewel when he turns to see Bilbo. There is something in him that looks forever worried, but he is too beautiful amongst the riches of Thorin’s kingdom for the dwarf to ever hang himself on a single facet of Bilbo’s being - least of all, a frown.

And even as he grows distrustful of his family, of his company, of the only souls who would have helped him reclaim his throne and all the riches that accompanied it, he does not consider Bilbo a threat. The hobbit looks too radiant in the piles of glittering gold, his hair and skin shining bronze and gold themselves, by turns, when he steps out into the sunlight. Thorin finds only treasure in him, and he confuses this same feeling as natural and normal; it does not distress him when he feels it for the gold of the mountain, too.

When he hangs a shirt of mithril on Bilbo’s body, the significance is not lost on anyone but the hobbit, himself.The rest of them know by then that Bilbo is not separate from Thorin’s treasure. At least, he isn’t by Thorin’s thoughts.

It’s what makes his betrayal so utterly complete, only a day later. It’s what makes Thorin want to destroy Bilbo with every inch of his being.

They have survived dragon fire and orcs, spiders and beasts, all for Erebor. In any other dwarven story, he and Bilbo would stand by each other with love as jealous as what he has for the treasures of the mountain. They would know each other’s feelings as their own.

And that is part of why the others turn their heads. They will not hurt Bilbo, but they will not witness the pain of their king, either. 

Thorin shouts that he will have dealings with none but his own. And he is not sure he wants dealings with them, either.

-

They meet again on the mountain top, when Thorin is free from his own sickness. It takes only the urgency of protecting his own from taking Bilbo by the arms and begging his forgiveness.  
It takes only an orc blade for him to fall back on the ice, and into Bilbo’s arms.

He can feel that he is dying, and that is alright. Thorin Oakenshield has been dying all his life, and he is exceptionally good at it. It is what the dwarves know will come, and what they accept. He hopes only that his memories will be as cherished as those that Bilbo shared with him, and the company.

Bilbo sputters and keens and chokes, and tells him that he’s not allowed to die. And Thorin presses on with his speech, releasing Bilbo from the contract between them. Telling him one, final time to go home.  
To go home, to the Shire, and plant his acorn. To have the same that protected Thorin all those years ago guard his front door, the limbs twisting down towards him jealously in the sunlight, shielding him from all. 

Doing what Thorin only wishes he could.

And Bilbo continues to argue with him, and Thorin smiles at the hobbit, because it’s so like Bilbo. The hobbit with the silver tongue thinks that he can talk the dying out of death.

Thorin Oakenshield dies at home, in Bilbo’s arms.

It is a peaceful death, and far more than he ever expected.


End file.
